Overview

Sophomore Cammie Bliss has long been labeled a stalker by her peers, but when a cute new boy named Toby arrives at her small town high school, Cammie has a chance to be "normal." Trouble is, she can't really help herself and she's up to her old tricks of "intense observation and following" pretty quick. Making things worse, her younger brother is dating one of the most popular girls in the school, her parents have separated, and her dad has begun to watch their house most nights. Cammie has simply got to ...

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Overview

Sophomore Cammie Bliss has long been labeled a stalker by her peers, but when a cute new boy named Toby arrives at her small town high school, Cammie has a chance to be "normal." Trouble is, she can't really help herself and she's up to her old tricks of "intense observation and following" pretty quick. Making things worse, her younger brother is dating one of the most popular girls in the school, her parents have separated, and her dad has begun to watch their house most nights. Cammie has simply got to figure out why she behaves the way she does, and end it once and for all.

Find out if Cammie is successful in Carley Moore's hilrious and poignant The Stalker Chronicles.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Deserved or not, Cammie Bliss’s reputation as a stalker has been cemented for years, but when new guy Toby moves to her small town, Cammie has a chance for a fresh start. This proves hard, as her sophomore year is already filled with challenges: her parents are splitting up, her younger brother is dating a popular cheerleader who snubs Cammie, and Toby himself is elusive, with a secret past of his own. Mixed into the present-day action are flashbacks to Cammie’s past stories of slipping notes into lockers, calling a boy daily under the pretense of needing homework help, and taking a few too many photographs of a student athlete while working for the yearbook. For the most part, it’s pretty tame behavior, just unsettling enough to raise red flags among Cammie’s classmates and lead to her ostracism. Debut author Moore paints a picture of an awkward girl who, more than anything, just doesn’t know how to engage with other people. Her characters are complex and sympathetic, particularly Cammie’s family, as it tries to hold itself together. Ages 12–up. Agent: Josh Adams, Adams Literary. (Mar.)

From the Publisher

“Cammie’s an appealing and sympathetic narrator…”--BCCB

"...this is a promising debut from Moore and almost makes the label of “stalker” seem not so bad."--VOYA

“A high-school sophomore learns to manage her tendency to spy on the ones she loves.” --Kirkus

Children's Literature
- Heather Welsh

Everyone knows at least one person who always finds themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. In this case, that person would be fifteen-year-old Cammie Bliss. Cammie is what you might call a hopeless romantic. It all starts with a crush on a boy, which leads to fascination and a curiosity to get to know that boy. Except, people at Cammie's school do not see it that way. They see it as flat out stalking, and Cammie is determined to change that. Her determination is really put to the test when super-cute Toby moves into town. Can she control her interest in Toby enough to get her stalker status dropped and still score the boyfriend she has always wanted? This book could be read and understood by a fifth grader, but it has mature themes and references in it that are better suited for older readers. The book is written as though Cammie herself is speaking (picture a high school girl who speaks rapidly and rarely pauses to catch her breath). There are several instances in which one sentence takes up half a page and the only punctuation is a series of commas to separate the string of thoughts. Reviewer: Heather Welsh

VOYA
- Kate Neff

High school sophomore Cammie Bliss has been slapped with the label of "stalker" for years because of her borderline obsessions with the boys she has liked, but the label actually is not as off the mark as one might believe at the opening of the book. Many teenage girls (and boys) can become infatuated with the object of their affection, which seems like the case with Cammie throughout most of the book. She recounts stories from her young life about her various crushes and how she "stalked" them, but these stories sound like the actions of your average preteen. The title does ring true at one point in the story, however, when she actually goes through the trash of her current obsession. A title that seemed overly trite finally hits the disturbing mark at this point. The cover and title of the book are a little off-putting and make the book seem like another fluffy and cliched young adult book, but there is surprising depth as the novel progresses and Cammie comes to grips with her obsessive behavior and watches her parents drift apart. There are also fresh moments of true humor, like when Cammie describes the lunchroom's taco bar: "After Taco Bar, there was no further way to break down beef." Overall, this is a promising debut from Moore and almost makes the label of "stalker" seem not so bad. Reviewer: Kate Neff

Kirkus Reviews

A high-school sophomore learns to manage her tendency to spy on the ones she loves. Despite the use of the word "stalker," which (even though the author explains it) puts a pathological spin on a character who is essentially just overanxious and far too curious, Moore's initially hard-to-like protagonist, Cammie Bliss, goes through a believable journey and transformation. Narrating in the first person in an amusing tone that never reaches the level of funny, Cammie knows she goes overboard, but she just can't seem to control herself. But when Toby, a handsome and interesting new boy moves into town and actually seems to like her, Cammie knows that it's time to finally get a hold of herself. Her situation is complicated by her challenging home life; during the course of the novel her parents separate, and her father, who has difficulty communicating when the content is emotional, begins to spy on his family. After Cammie's behavior nearly ruins her nascent romance with Toby--in a misguided and improbable attempt to discover the secret behind his leaving his last school, she goes through his garbage--she works to reform herself. Notwithstanding the icky subject matter and cringeworthy heroine, the story realistically tracks Cammie's psychological evolution, earning its feel-good ending. (Fiction. 12-16)

School Library Journal

Gr 6–10—This is chick-lit with a serious undertone. Sophomore Cammie Bliss has a pretty intense reputation: everyone in school knows she is a stalker. She has followed most of the guys around at one time or another, scaring them away from dating her. When Toby moves to town, she wants to change, but her habits are hard to break. She rides past his home several times on her bike, riffles through his garbage, and tries to figure out why he and his family moved to Lakewood, NY, in the first place. Meanwhile, her parents are talking about a divorce, and her younger brother has started to date one of the popular girls, who first labeled her a stalker. With the help of Toby and her best friend, Cammie's issue is resolved a little too easily. Indeed, several issues are resolved to make a pat, happy ending.—Natalie Struecker, Rock Island Public Library, IL

Read an Excerpt

The Stalker Chronicles

Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

IT’S NOT LIKE I WANTED TO BE A STALKER. No one says to herself, Oh, he’s cute. Let me follow him around, call him every day, and walk by his house after school so many times that within two weeks he’ll avoid me in the halls and whisper to his friends that I’m a freak and that I might be cute, but it doesn’t matter because I’m a wacko, certifiable, a nut job—one of those girls who takes things too far, makes a fool of herself, and just doesn’t seem to care.
Well, I did care. That was the problem. I cared too much and too fast and I lacked the usual humiliation and embarrassment barometers that most girls are awarded at birth or, if they are late bloomers, no later than the end of third grade. It wasn’t that I didn’t have them. I did, but they always kicked in way too late—after the damage was done and the boy had been scared away. Only then, when I saw him in the hallway averting his eyes, did I realize that I’d gone too far. Then I got embarrassed. I really did, and then I got mad. Mad at myself for doing it again and for being such a colossally crappy reader of what my best friend, Rosie, called the signs.
One of the signs that things were a little out of control was that I’d started to get a reputation. A girl can get a reputation for all kinds of things: for giving hand jobs and blow jobs, for having sex, for not having sex, for posting too many revealing pictures on her Facebook page, for studying too hard, for not studying hard enough, for wearing the wrong bra, or for not wearing a thong with a certain pair of pants. But a reputation for stalking was a different species altogether. To be called a stalker in the hallway, to have it hissed at you by co–head cheerleader Kristy Day, or to have it whispered about you behind your barely turned back as you ran through your scales in band in the hopes of at least looking like you’d practiced, well, then you knew you had a reputation and it was getting out of hand.
I didn’t want to be a stalker. It was an accident—a strange natural compulsion that I wanted to believe I could fix. Stalkers were scary guys who in movies showed up outside your window at night. Stalkers required restraining orders and police visits. Stalkers were hardly ever female. Or if they were, they were adult women who had been horribly wronged by their married-to-another-woman boyfriends and who had finally decided to get revenge. You know, there were movies about these women. I mean, they went too far, really too far. Stalkers were not supposed to be teenage girls. I was not supposed to be a stalker. But I was, or at least that’s what people in my high school thought.
But I wanted to change and I wanted to get better. It was April of my sophomore year, and I wanted to be a different kind of girl. Maybe it was something about spring. Maybe I wanted to make a fresh start because the flowers were in bloom and the air smelled new and clean. Or maybe I’d had enough. Deep down I knew I wasn’t totally crazy, and in a lot of ways I was a normal fifteen-year-old girl who loved English and history and tolerated math because she knew it was important, who had exactly one best friend, who worried that her mother worked too hard, who had a little brother who was a soccer star and an all-around pain in the ass, who had two cats named Lucy and Ethel, who wished she had more clothes, who memorized her favorite scenes from television shows, who was allergic to bee stings, and who had a hard time saying sorry even when she was wrong.
I am Cammie Bliss.
I used to be a stalker.

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